Intelligent bookmarks and information management system based on the same

ABSTRACT

An intelligent bookmark is a collection of information, including an address (e.g., a URL) for a document (e.g., web page) or other hyper-media enabled item bundled together with selected other information. The selected other information may be manually or automatically obtained from the document, the browser history leading up to the display of the document, user entered annotations, etc. A collection of intelligent bookmarks may be sorted and searched using the selected other information. Intelligent bookmarks may be exchanged between users, and users may edit the bookmark content or in layers above the bookmark. Users may rate the bookmarks. A complete system provides for creating, storing, accessing, editing, grouping, exchanging, and searching intelligent bookmarks locally and/or remotely via a server.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

The present invention is related to and claims priority from copendingU.S. Provisional patent application titled “Information ManagementSystem Based on Intelligent Bookmarks”, Ser. No. 60/750,213, filed Dec.14, 2005 which is incorporated herein by reference. The presentapplication is also related to copending U.S. Provisional patentapplication titled “Information Management System Utilizing IntelligentHistory Items Based on Intelligent Bookmarks”, Ser. No. 60/765,074,filed Feb. 3, 2006, which is incorporated herein by reference.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

The present invention is related to accessing the Internet, and moreparticularly to a method for creating and managing bookmarks whichprovide search and organizational elements within a bookmark database.

The Internet and World Wide Web provide a wealth of information on anysubject. Most people with access to the Internet rely on it for news,stock information, research, hobbies, and other information they seek,such as matrimony and other personal issues. In terms of Internettechnology, advancements in different areas of communication have grownat a rapid pace. Such advancements include e-mail, discussion boards andforums, chatting, instant messaging, voice over IP, RSS, Podcasts, etc.Hardware advancements include faster PCs, networking speeds andstandards, faster ISP services, etc. Software advancement includesapplications based on Flash, Java, XML, etc. Browser advancementsinclude more security, more customization, tabbed browsing, moreavailable plug-ins, etc. However, one area that has been overlooked isadvances in bookmarks.

Since information on the internet can be constantly updated or changed,information may not always be permanently or persistently available andmay be difficult to capture or store. To address this difficulty, usersoften capture information on the internet via screenshots. Screenshotsportray an exact image of what the user is viewing. Screenshots can alsobe useful in capturing a snapshot of information, particularlyinformation that may have been provided or accessed from a database.However, the screenshot may be limited to the user's display size (whichis usually smaller than most articles). Screenshots do not necessarilystore any searchable text and therefore are not easily searchable.Capturing information through a screenshot does not necessarily allow auser to copy/paste text from it either. Also, the saving of screenshotsis not effectively integrated in the browser and thus require the userto manually manage creating an image file from the screenshot, namingit, and saving it under categorized folders for further retrieval.Further, information, saved in a screenshot may be effectively updatedor changed, and the screenshot is not able to verify such updates andchanges. These steps make it very cumbersome to user screenshots tocapture information online, thus limiting the usefulness andeffectiveness of screenshots as a tool to capture, preserve, share, andmanage internet-based information and content.

Cutting and pasting text and pictures from web pages into wordprocessing documents is another way of saving information. This methodis one of the most common way users store and capture information fromthe internet. By cutting and pasting pictures and text, users save suchinformation on their own computers. However, this method may destroy theformatting on the original webpage. Often, the word processor uses upcomputer resources (such as RAM and hard-drive space). Many cut andpaste entries also copy unnecessary tables and script which makes itvery difficult to have the information easily readable and useful.

Users may also choose to use the browser's “Save” functionality to savea webpage. Although this method is fairly easy, it also takes uphard-drive resources by saving every single picture of the webpage(often including unwanted advertisements and content, menus, etc) andretaining the original links by mapping them to directories on thecomputer. This method is resource intensive and results in thecollection of vast amounts of information that may be unnecessary. Also,this “Save” functionality may not be very accurate in pages with scriptsbecause some references in these scripts that rely on server-sideprocessing cannot be accessed by the client side browser for laterexecution, resulting in missing information when saved. Since the “Save”functionality tries to retain the structure of the website, any changesthe user would do to sort and organize these downloaded files/foldersmay potentially break the link structures of saved pages potentially“losing” important information. These factors can make the “Save”functionality a last resort due to the difficulty of organization, theinaccuracy in capturing information, and the demand in hard-drive space.

Printing is another way in which information can be captured from theinternet. Printing captures information from the internet, but creates anon-digital version of the information. Printing allows for users tomark up information and file it easily and also have it accessible whennot being connected to the internet. However, not having a digital copyhas a lot of drawbacks in terms of being able to easily and effectivelyutilize the information in subsequent research and other materialcompilation. There are other drawbacks to printing as well. It is notalways feasible to print material off the web. Printing files, that arehundreds of pages long, wastes ink and paper. Lot of portal sites andcomplex web pages are not very printer-friendly as well and may not beformatted to allow easy printing. Also, keeping a hard-copy ofinformation captured online can be difficult in terms of filing andaccessing for the future.

Bookmarks are a common but ineffective way to capture informationonline. As used herein, a bookmark is a pointer acting as a reference ornavigation element to a document or to a section of or location within adocument, that automatically brings the referred information to the userwhen the navigation element is selected. This automatic functionality ispart of a browser, or other software application within which thedocument is being viewed. Bookmarks are not limited to HTML or the web,but may be used in almost any electronic media.

Bookmarks today have not changed much over the years as informationcontained in a bookmark still includes only a single line of text thatholds a URL, possibly associated with the title of the bookmarkeddocument (either extracted from the page being viewed or entered by theuser). No element of nor content from the body of the document ispresent in the bookmark. When a bookmarked web page gets taken off-lineor gets updated, the user may lose information which was meant to becaptured, since revisiting the URL may return an updated page or anon-existing page error. Furthermore, web-sites often undergomaintenance and restructuring rendering bookmarks possibly no longerrelevant or useful. Bookmarked pages are also not easily searchable, andusers have to manually access each bookmarked page to search them.Another problematic aspect about bookmarks is that when categorized,bookmarks use folders based on a very basic user interface (In the userinterface, users are limited to the file and folder aspects of theunderlying operating system with limited drag-and-drop functionality).

In addition, for a user to have a similar web experience on differentPCs or internet-enabled devices (including wireless), it is importantthat users be able to utilize previously identified bookmarks.Unfortunately, bookmarks are also not easily portable. There arewebsites that allow you to store URLs online, but this only lets a useruse the URLs without providing a common interface of bookmark features.Other shortcomings of bookmarks are with dynamically generatedweb-pages. Internet forms that provide receipts and pages that accessdata from different databases general have no static address that theycan be accessed at. Without knowing, users try to capture such pagesthrough bookmarks only to revisit those bookmarks and receive errors orthe parent pages loosing valuable information. All these reasons andmore make bookmarks an ineffective way to capture and utilizeinformation available on the internet.

Since more users rely on the internet in their daily lives, it isimportant that they have a better ability to manage information theyhave gathered. It is also necessary that there are easier ways for usersto utilize the information they have gathered by being able to access,search, share, rate this information and integrate this in currentinternet technologies.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Accordingly, the present invention provides a method for creating andmanaging a database of intelligent bookmarks, that provides users abetter ability to manage information they have gathered by allowingusers to access, search, share and rate this information. While thereare a number of unique aspects to the present invention, a common themeis the intelligent bookmark. An intelligent bookmark according to thepresent invention is a collection of information, including an address(e.g., a URL) for a document or other hyper-media enabled item bundledtogether with selected other information. The selected other informationmay be manually or automatically obtained from the document, the browserhistory leading up to the display of the document, user enteredannotations, etc.

For the purposes hereof, the term document is taken to mean anelectronic file or similar container containing content data, formattinginformation, metadata (data that describe characteristics of thedocument to aid in its identification, discovery, assessment, andmanagement), and possibly code capable of causing selectedfunctionality. Examples of documents include web pages, files associatedwith word processing, spreadsheet, drawing and graphics, database, andpresentation software, music, image, and game files, etc. Documents ofthe type of concern herein typically will be partitioned by tags orother means into sections, such as a title section (such as a filename), a script section (such as formatting), a metadata section (suchas date of creation/modification), and a body section (such as a textsection).

In a first aspect of the present invention, an intelligent bookmark iscreated by retrieving an address of a document, for example a web page,extracting identifier information from the document, and saving theaddress in conjunction with the identifier information as an intelligentbookmark. Such identifier information is obtained at least in part fromthe body of the document, and therefore includes more that simply thetitle or name associated with the address.

In some embodiments in accordance with the first aspect of the presentinvention, the identifier information includes the URL of the webpage,text within the webpage, non-text materials (e.g., images) andmetaheaders. Portions of the non-text material may be scanned by opticalcharacter recognition to extract any text information contained therein.The identifier information may further include the parent website, dateand time stamp information, search keywords used to locate the Internetwebpage, user entered text and user entered preference ratings for theInternet webpage. The identifier information may further includeanimations or video within an Internet webpage, wherein the animationsor video are recorded using a video recording tool.

In an embodiment in accordance with the first aspect of the invention,the intelligent bookmark is saved within a Web browser application. Inan additional embodiment in accordance with the first aspect of theinvention, the intelligent bookmark is saved onto a separate bookmarkapplication within the user computer, and can be accessed offline. Theintelligent bookmark can be imported from an offline source to an onlinesource, such as a Web browser application or remote server. In anotherembodiment in accordance with the first aspect of the invention, theintelligent bookmark is saved on a remote server. The intelligentbookmark can be accessed by any user with access to the remote server.

In yet another embodiment in accordance with the first aspect of theinvention, a user identification is saved in conjunction with anintelligent bookmark. The user identification is used to denote aparticular user.

In a second aspect of the present invention, a database for intelligentbookmarks is created by retrieving an image of an Internet webpage,extracting identifier information from the webpage, assigning theidentifier information a filing category, filing the image inconjunction with the identifier information according to the filingcategory, and saving the image in conjunction with the identifierinformation as an intelligent bookmark.

In some embodiments in accordance with the second aspect of the presentinvention, the identifier information includes the URL of the webpage,text within the webpage, non-text materials and metaheaders. Thenon-text material is scanned by optical character recognition to extractany text information contained within the non-text material. Theidentifier information may further include the parent website, date andtime stamp information, search keywords used to locate the Internetwebpage, user entered text and user entered preference ratings for theInternet webpage. The identifier information may further includeanimations or video within an Internet webpage, wherein the animationsor video are recorded using a video recording tool.

In an embodiment in accordance with the second aspect of the presentinvention, the intelligent bookmark is searchable.

In other embodiments in accordance with the second aspect of the presentinvention, the filing category is assigned to the intelligent bookmarkby requesting the user to input the filing category information, isautomatically assigned to the intelligent bookmark based on theextracted identifier information or is one of a number of default filingcategories, which is automatically assigned to the intelligent bookmarkbased on the extracted identifier information.

In an embodiment in accordance with the second aspect of the invention,the intelligent bookmark is saved within a Web browser application. Inan additional embodiment in accordance with the first aspect of theinvention, the intelligent bookmark is saved onto a separate bookmarkapplication within the user computer, and can be accessed offline. Theintelligent bookmark can be imported from an offline source to an onlinesource, such as a Web browser application or remote server. In anotherembodiment in accordance with the first aspect of the invention, theintelligent bookmark is saved on a remote server. The intelligentbookmark can be accessed by any user with access to the remote server.

In yet another embodiment in accordance with the second aspect of theinvention, a user identification is saved in conjunction with anintelligent bookmark. The user identification is used to denote aparticular user.

In some embodiments in accordance with the second aspect of theinvention, the intelligent bookmark is deleted from the database orarchived. The intelligent bookmark will be deleted or archived if iteither has not been accessed for a default period of time or if the userrequests the bookmark to be deleted or archived.

In another embodiment in accordance with the second aspect of theinvention, a database can be created by copying intelligent bookmarks aremote server, an offline application on a user's computer or a Webbrowser application to a database.

In a third aspect of the present invention, a database for intelligentbookmarks can be accessed and managed by requesting a user to enter asearch term, searching the database for intelligent bookmarks containingthe search term, displaying a list of intelligent bookmarks with thesearch term, requesting the user to select one or more intelligentbookmarks, requesting the user to select one or more bookmark actions tobe performed on the intelligent bookmark, and performing a selectedaction on the one or more selected intelligent bookmarks.

In some embodiments in accordance with the third aspect of theinvention, the search term may include keyword text, a rating, date andtime information, a category or a user identification, to search forintelligent bookmarks input by a particular user.

In other embodiments in accordance with the third aspect of theinvention, a bookmark action may include opening the webpage for theintelligent bookmark on a Web browser application, sending theintelligent bookmark to another location via an electronic mailapplication or instant message application, attaching the intelligentbookmark to an Internet Blog, exporting the intelligent bookmark to anexternal file, creating a bibliography based on the extracted identifierinformation or saving the intelligent bookmark to a bookmark community,wherein said bookmark community is accessible by multiple users.

In a fourth aspect of the present invention, users can be notified ofwebsites and advertisements of interest to the user by creating a userprofile, wherein the profile comprises identifier information from theintelligent bookmarks, ratings of the internet webpages and frequency ofvisits to internet webpages, evaluating the profile to denote the mostpopular websites for the user, and sending the user advertisements andwebsites that are similar to the most popular websites for the user.

In a fifth aspect of the present invention, a database for intelligentbookmarks can be created and managed from within a Web browserapplication by displaying an intelligent bookmark toolbar for actionsrelated to intelligent bookmarks within a Web browser application,capturing an image of a webpage using said toolbar, extractingidentifier information from the webpage, displaying identifierinformation and the image to user, wherein user may make changes toidentifier information, assigning the identifier information a category,displaying the identifier information in conjunction with the capturedimage to the user as a preview, filing the image in conjunction with theidentifier information according to the category, saving the image inconjunction with the identifier information as an intelligent bookmark,wherein the intelligent bookmark is not saved if an intelligent bookmarkfor the particular Internet webpage already exists, and creating a linkto the intelligent bookmark within a pull-down menu within theintelligent bookmark toolbar, wherein the link is displayed according tothe category.

In an embodiment in accordance with the fifth aspect of the invention, auser can select the sections of the Internet webpage to be captured.

In some embodiments in accordance with the fifth aspect of the presentinvention, the identifier information includes the URL of the webpage,text within the webpage, non-text materials and metaheaders. Thenon-text material is scanned by optical character recognition to extractany text information contained within the non-text material. Theidentifier information may further include the parent website, date andtime stamp information, search keywords used to locate the Internetwebpage, user entered text and user entered preference ratings for theInternet webpage. The identifier information may further includeanimations or video within an Internet webpage, wherein the animationsor video are recorded using a video recording tool.

In other embodiments in accordance with the fifth aspect of the presentinvention, the filing category is assigned to the intelligent bookmarkby requesting the user to input the filing category information, isautomatically assigned to the intelligent bookmark based on theextracted identifier information or is one of a number of default filingcategories, which is automatically assigned to the intelligent bookmarkbased on the extracted identifier information.

In another embodiment in accordance with the fifth aspect of theinvention, the user is allowed to edit the displayed preview. The usermay add or delete text or images.

Thus, according to one aspect of the present invention, acomputer-implemented method for creating an intelligent bookmark to adocument, the document of the type including at least an address, atitle, and a body, the intelligent bookmark including at least anaddress of a document and identifier information about that documentobtained at least in part from the body of the document, comprisesdisplaying the document, retrieving the address of the document,extracting certain identifier information from the body of the document,and storing said address and said certain identifier information suchthat said address and said identifier information are associated withone another so that the document can be accessed from the address andinformation about the document can be obtained from the identifierinformation. The extraction may advantageously be automatic, withoutrequiring specific user input. The automatically extracted informationmay be supplemented manually by the user. Search history, extrinsicdata, and captured data may also be included with the identifyinginformation. The method may be embodied within the memory of a computingdevice or as a series of steps stored on one or more computer-readablemedia, such as magnetic or optical disk, flash memory, etc.

According to another aspect of the present invention, acomputer-implemented method of creating a user profile from a user'scollection of intelligent bookmarks to documents, each such document ofthe type including at least an address, a title, and a body, eachintelligent bookmark including at least an address of a document andidentifier information about that document obtained at least in partfrom the body of the document, comprises determining from the user'scollection of intelligent bookmarks at least one of the following forthe user: categories of interest to the user; document characteristicsof interest to the user; keywords of interest to the user; and documentbehavior of interest to the user. The method may be embodied within thememory of a computing device or as a series of steps stored on one ormore computer-readable media, such as magnetic or optical disk, flashmemory, etc.

According to still another aspect of the present invention, a computerserver-implemented method of providing a community of users with accessto intelligent bookmarks to documents, each such document of the typeincluding at least an address, a title, and a body, comprises providingan interface to the server which allows multiple user to: create of anintelligent bookmark to a document; view an intelligent bookmark: searchfor an intelligent bookmark; edit an intelligent bookmark; rank anintelligent bookmark; upload an intelligent bookmark; and provingstorage, in communication with said server computer, on which saidintelligent bookmarks may be stored; such that each intelligent bookmarkincludes at least an address of a document and identifier informationabout that document obtained at least in part from the body of thedocument. The method may be embodied within the memory of a computingdevice or as a series of steps stored on one or more computer-readablemedia, such as magnetic or optical disk, flash memory, etc.

The above is a summary of merely a number of the unique aspects,features, and advantages of the present invention. However, this summaryis not exhaustive. Thus, these and other aspects, features, andadvantages of the present invention will become more apparent from thefollowing detailed description and the appended drawings, whenconsidered in light of the claims provided herein.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

In the drawings appended hereto like reference numerals denote likeelements between the various drawings. While illustrative, the drawingsare not drawn to scale. In the drawings:

FIG. 1 is a an illustration of a number of elements of an intelligentbookmark according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an illustration of a sample record of an intelligent bookmarkaccording to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is an illustration of a bookmark preview and editing userinterface according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is an illustration of a timeline presentation of intelligentbookmarks according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIGS. 5A and 5B are illustrations of off-line (local) and on-line(server) models, respectively, of a system according to an embodiment ofthe present invention.

FIG. 6 is an illustration of a community-user model of a systemaccording to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is an illustration of a process by which a user can share anintelligent bookmark with others according to an embodiment of thepresent invention.

FIG. 8 is an illustration of the elements of a user profile created froma population of intelligent bookmarks according to an embodiment of thepresent invention.

FIG. 9 is an illustration of a process for automatically assigning acategory to an intelligent bookmark by referencing other databases thatmay reside remotely or on a user's computer according to an embodimentof the present invention.

FIG. 10 is an illustration of a process for creating an intelligentbookmark according to an embodiment of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

In the following description the term intelligent bookmark is used torefer to an associated collection of information, including an address(e.g., a URL) for a document (e.g., web page) or other hyper-mediaenabled item and selected other information (referred to herein asidentifier information). Typically, the document in question is awebpage, and the description which follows assumes such is the case.However, it will be understood by one skilled in the art that thedocument may also be an item stored locally on a user's computer, suchas a word processing, spreadsheet, or presentation document, etc.Accordingly, the following is by way of example, and not intended to bea limitation on the spirit and scope of the present invention.

FIG. 1 illustrates a sample, representative Internet webpage 4,displayed in a window 6 by a web browser application. Using a mouse, penand tablet, or other computer interface means (not shown), a user maycapture a selectable area, 10, which the user may wish to bookmark. Thatis, area 10 may contain information such as text, picture, audio, video,etc., which the user may wish to quickly recover (among other optionswhich are discussed further below) at a later time. The captured areabecomes the source for data which will form an intelligent bookmarkaccording to the present invention. By default, the image captured inthe process of constructing the intelligent bookmark is the whole screenthe user is currently viewing (although this may be set to otherselection choices by the user in appropriate applications of the presentinvention).

Once the page is captured, the process of creating identifierinformation by extracting portions of the page in the best-suited manneris initiated. For example, text and html information that can beextracted from the webpage are identified and saved at 14. Keywords 16may be identified and extracted from text 14 or other portions of thewebpage. One method for identifying relevant keywords is disclosed inU.S. Pat. No. 6,470,307 titled “Method And Apparatus For AutomaticallyIdentifying Keywords Within A Document” which is incorporated herein byreference. See also U.S. Pat. No. 5,659,730, and U.S. Pat. No. 7,082,427for other such techniques (each of which also being incorporated hereinby reference). The URL of the website 18 and the parent site 20 areextracted. Other metadata information 22, present in the webpage mayalso be extracted based on page metaheaders 24. For example, date andtime stamp information 26 can be extracted from the metaheader 24.Images and non-textual information 28 may be identified and extracted.Based on the available information, a category or categories 30 mayautomatically be assigned. Further, the bookmark can also be manuallycategorized, and keywords can be added by the user.

Based on user-selectable preferences, the user can also choose to haveimages and non-textual information 28 scanned by OCR (Optical CharacterRecognition) to extract further text and information. Furtherintegration can be incorporated in the intelligent bookmark to generatePDF files from the website text 14 to attach to the intelligentbookmark, if necessary. Advertisements 32 (or links thereto) can beblocked, removed, or maintained, while creating bookmarks as well. Theuser can manually rate the bookmark at 34 depending on his/her interest.The bookmarked site can be checked for a community rating at 36 as well,allowing for the user to further update the community rating. Otherfeatures may include capturing animation/video or other display datathat dynamically changes on the screen. There are a variety of COTSproducts that capture screen animation/video by recording the screen. Anexample of screen capture and recording software is Camtasia availablefrom TechSmith.com (http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp). If the userwould like to capture such information, a “record” functionality wouldallow a video screenshot of such information to be stored in theintelligent bookmark. This type of “record” functionality can also allowfor user interaction with certain websites to be recorded and bookmarkedas well.

Interface preferences allowing creation of bookmarks with some or all ofthe aforementioned features will be set as a function of the desiredlevel of complexity of the intelligent bookmarks (i.e., how muchinformation should be extracted/stored, or if special functions neededto be performed) The greater the demand on the computing resourcesrequired for a feature (e.g., applying optical character recognition toan image files is considered a moderately high demand feature) the morea user benefits from disabling that feature unless truly required.

Collectively, the details captured above are referred to as identifierinformation 40, and the address 42 and associated identifier information40 are collectively referred to as an intelligent bookmark 44, as shownin FIG. 2 embodied as a database record. While the above has providedexamples of certain identifier information, virtually any data which maybe extracted from a document or added by a user may qualify asidentifier information. Thus, the concept that an address has associatedwith it identifier information is not intended to be limited by theforegoing.

An intelligent bookmark 44 is typically stored in a data base, eitheron-line or off-line (discussed further below), which can interact with auser's browser software. FIG. 3 illustrates an interface 46 in which auser may create, view, edit, preview, etc. intelligent bookmarks. Basedon preferences, the user interface 46 allows the user to edit theintelligent bookmark 44 by modifying, adding or deleting the variouselements of the identifier information. For example, a user may createcustom categorization and keywords, adding them to those automaticallygenerated as identifier information discussed above, the user may decideif the taken screenshot/video capture adequately contains the content tobe stored, etc.

This functionality can permit a user to fetch links as well. Forexample, a web page viewed by a user may itself contain multiplehyperlinks. In addition to bookmarking the viewed page, the user may beprompted to bookmark the pages pointed to by the hyperlinks. This isuseful in cases where the user wants to gather information from ainformative directory type page. Additionally, the user may right-clickon a link (or take another similar action) to “fetch” that link, and“preview” how the link would look if the user accessed the page and wereto bookmark it. Before the actual bookmarking, the user can preview thepossible bookmarks of the hyperlinks one after another to decide which,if any, should be bookmarked. Based on this, the user can save thebookmark, open the bookmark to edit, visit the actual link to bookmarkmanually (screenshot/video capture), or discard the bookmark.Essentially the user is permitted to bookmark a page without accessingit manually, allowing the user to choose to bookmark selected links(with selected identifying information) present on a website beingviewed. This allows the user to browse websites more efficiently,without having to visit pages in separate windows or pop-ups.

A user can easily search through and sort intelligent bookmarks based onidentifier information 40. For example, the text/html 14 captured in theintelligent bookmark 44 may be searched. Additionally, users may sortand group links based on categories 30, or websites (e.g., parentwebsite 20). Users can also search and sort intelligent bookmarks by thefrequency they have been visited or the time frame of those visits. Thetime frame/frequency of the visits is the number of times the useraccesses the bookmark/visits the URL after the bookmark has beencreated. The time of creation would be a time-stamp of the bookmark.Users can view intelligent bookmarks in a time-line type display,illustrated in FIG. 4 which sorts bookmarks based on the data and timestamp on the bookmark (for example filtered by a keyword, bookmarkrating, etc.)

Once created, an intelligent bookmark can be saved and accessed offline,FIG. 5A, or online, FIG. 5B. In the offline software model shown in FIG.5A, a bookmark database 50 resides directly on the user's computer 52.The user can access intelligent bookmarks stored directly on his or hercomputer 52. By being on the user's machine, the software accessing theintelligent bookmarks would be able to execute commands and processinformation quickly without network latency. In the online model shownin FIG. 5B, the user's computer 52 is connected to a remote server 56.The bookmark database 58 resides on the server 56. The software itselfmay be operating system-independent, allowing it to reside on a separatedevice 60 such as a portable USB device, an mp3 player or a Bluetoothenabled device. An application that does not depend on the computer'soperating system directly can be portable, which allows the user theoption of running it on a computer that does not have the softwareinstalled or available, such as a borrowed or public computer. This way,a user may have access to intelligent bookmark information from a numberof sources, local, remote or a combination of the two.

Based on the device, the user can choose what resolution in which toaccess bookmarks or bookmark metadata. That is, a bookmark may bepresented differently depending on the platform from which it isaccessed. For example, accessing an intelligent bookmark via a mobiledevice such as a smart phone, the URL and a small version of thescreenshot is likely all that would be desired or prudent to display.Yet accessing that same bookmark on a powerful, networked desktop PC mayproduce a high resolution, large format screenshot as well as a numberof identifier information items.

Knowing the type and capabilities of the device accessing a bookmark mayalso permit certain specific tool behavior. For example, knowing that abookmark is being accessed from a smartphone may cause the bookmark tobe displayed with easily identified phone numbers, one-touch dialing ofthose phone numbers, etc. Therefore the type of presentation andoperational logic for bookmarks may depend upon the interface device.This also means that the information captured and stored as part of theintelligent bookmark can anticipate specific device types, and thevarious access formats can be preset, allowing fast access of suchinformation without further burdening computing time with reformattingdisplay formats, etc.

In the online server model, the user's computer 52 could run apre-installed software application that communicates with the server 56to access the remotely stored intelligent bookmark database 58. Otherembodiments may include plug-ins, toolbars or flash-based applicationsthat could run on the user's computer 52 (such as in conjunction with aweb browser application) allowing communication with the online server56. The user can access an interface to view, add or modify theintelligent bookmarks. This feature allows for users to easily havefiles accessible from the internet for later use.

Intelligent bookmarks on the server 56 may easily be interlinked basedon category, keywords, ratings, and other metadata. Essentially, usersform directories or run queries to view similar intelligent bookmarks.Recommendation technologies, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No.7,113,917, U.S. Pat. No. 6,266,649, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,064,980, eachincorporated herein by reference, would be a way (when applied tobookmarks) to conceptually relate bookmarks for recommendations. Theserver (or an element of the db management software) may also preventduplicate intelligent bookmarks. In such cases, when users want tocontribute information to the bookmark, ratings, keywords, articles,pictures, video, similar websites, and other information may becontributed. Besides the identifying information 40, other relevantmetadata such as the member's location and other geographical factorsmay be used to group or categorize Intelligent Bookmarks.

A combination of the offline (FIG. 5A) and online (FIG. 5B) model may beutilized, allowing the user to synchronize the offline data base 50 andonline database 58. Since server database 58 can be accessed from anetwork, a user may be provided a degree of flexibility in accessing theintelligent bookmarks.

Referring now to FIG. 6, an on-line model in which a number of users 62,64, 66 are in communication with a server 68, which is in turn incommunication with intelligent bookmark database 70, is illustrated. Insuch a model, a community of users may share, edit, add, etc. individualintelligent bookmarks or collections of intelligent bookmarks. Forexample, a user 66 can initiate access to intelligent bookmarks storedin database 70 through use of a community portal (software, not shown)resident on server 68. User 66 can then search, browse, copy, followlinks in, etc. the intelligent bookmarks stored in database 70. Eachintelligent bookmark in database 70 can include properties allowing acreator of such a bookmark to permit or deny third parties from editingor deleting the bookmark once stored. User 66 may contribute to acommunity rating 36 of the intelligent bookmarks in database 70according to a rating system, designed for example to help users quicklynarrow a search to relevant material. In searching by keywords,metadata, dates, ratings, etc., URLs of sites others have found relevantto a topic are more efficiently and quickly identified. A user may thenfollow the URLs to the underlying document or site at which theinformation the user seeks will likely be found. The interlinkedintelligent bookmark system present on a community server thusfacilitates finding information through the use of the storedintelligent bookmarks. By incorporating appropriate filters, thecommunity server can also ensure that spam and other harmful items donot reach the server, for example based on examining the individualintelligent bookmarks and the URLs to which they point. Furthermore, thecommunity server can track whether links are alive and mark bookmarks asobsolete, current, new, etc. While the community aspect of the presentinvention is, in one sense, an adjunct to traditional web searches, thecommunity server may itself have search engine type technology to makesearches for intelligent bookmarks very efficient.

Intelligent bookmarks can be set to automatically expire or be archivedfrom their database (e.g., 50, 58). Users may be prompted before suchexpiration or archiving depending on set preferences. Archiving ordeleting old bookmarks or non-relevant bookmarks preserves the wealth ofinformation in the offline or online database 50, 58.

FIG. 7 presents process 80 by which a user can share an intelligentbookmark with others. Sharing is typically initiated at step 82 fromwithin an interface through which a user may interact with theintelligent bookmarks. Once a user selects one or more intelligentbookmarks to share at step 84, the user can export, share, publish orselect from a number of other sharing options as follows. The userinterface will typically control converting the bookmark into anappropriate format, so that a user can most easily select theappropriate sending option. While in the following we refer to thesending of an intelligent bookmark, it will be understood that theactual item delivered may be the database record representing theintelligent bookmark, a pointer to the database record located on aserver or networked computer, or a combination of the two.

First, an intelligent bookmark can be sent by e-mail at 86 to auser-specified address. The bookmark may be an attachment to the emailmessage or may be a portion of the email note itself.

An intelligent bookmark can be sent using instant messaging at 88.Intelligent bookmarks can either be directly instantly messaged toanother, or the bookmark can be inserted as an attachment.

An intelligent bookmark can be sent using a web log (blog) system at 90.Users can create the blog post within their bookmarks. For example, auser could comment on the selected bookmarks as they would do in a blog.This blog entry could be stored on the bookmarks as well in anothermetadata category. The bookmark can be activated by an html script, orby cutting and pasting into the online blogging interface provided bythe blog provider. This way, users can share their blog with commentsand attach the bookmarks to the post.

An intelligent bookmark may be shared through internet communities at92, as previously discussed. Again, there is significant value inproviding intelligent bookmarks to an appropriate networked community,with its members able to search, rate, add to, etc. those bookmarks. Theserver software will typically control the uploading of bookmarksonline, such as to the community database. There may be links from thecommunity bookmark to individual bookmarks depending on whether or notthe user wants the bookmark to be accessible after updates or deletion.The community may allow users to have automatic ratings of bookmarks andto find similar bookmarks based on topics, categories, etc. Intelligentbookmarks may include private data and public data, and the creator ofsuch intelligent bookmarks provided with the ability to control thirdparty access to the private data.

An intelligent bookmark can also be exported, from a client machine or aserver, and saved as other types of documents at 94. For example, abookmark can be saved in the form of a Word, Excel, Powerpoint, PDF,html or some other document tool or other standard.

Once a user selects one or more intelligent bookmarks at 84 the user mayalso generate bibliographic information at 96 based on the identifierinformation. The bibliography or other useful reference information canbe easily copied and pasted into other documents. This simplifies theuse of bibliographic and reference data from a bookmark.

Users may also import information into their bookmark database at 98.While a typical intelligent bookmark interface will permit fetching URLsfrom a file and generating identifier information therefrom, users mayalso import intelligent bookmarks from the community or other users.Intelligent bookmarks may be downloaded, received via IM or Email, takenfrom a blog, or manually copied from storage media.

Information from intelligent bookmarks within a user's database can beused to create a user profile 100 as shown FIG. 8. This type of profilegeneration does not require user accounts to be created and the profilegenerated can be non-personal material. FIG. 8 shows some of the areasfrom which a user profile is developed. Different categories 102, topics104, and keywords 108 listed in the user's bookmarks can provide insightinto which areas are of interest to the user. Based on the interactionwith the user's bookmarks, such as the frequency of visit which iscaptured at 112 and time spent which is captured at 114, a count of thenumber of types of links (e.g., a weighting factor) captured at 116, andother data, behavior data 110 may be generated. Also, any specificcharacteristics 106 of the websites bookmarked can be furtherinformative of the user profile. The information available from theuser's bookmark database may be analyzed by the server and compared toother databases to derive certain conclusions on generating a userprofile. Profile information may also be manually set or controlled byusers.

Once a user profile 100 is created, the user can be notified of internetwebsites and advertisements that might be of interest to the user.Having a user profile makes it very easy for users to get suggestions totopics of interest from the community in an effective manner. In anembodiment, there may be a browsing companion (e.g., a plug-in softwaremodule) on the user's browser which can offer similar website and topicsthe user can browse based on his/her profile. As with topics ofinterest, advertisements and other sponsored material may be sent tousers in a non-intrusive manner by the browsing companion. The userreceives such targeted ad information from the server which combinesuser profile information with current browsing or bookmark information.This would allow for more location and demographic based advertisementsas well.

FIG. 9 depicts one embodiment according to the present invention of howa category can automatically be assigned to an intelligent bookmark byreferencing other databases that may reside remotely or on a user'scomputer. These various databases may contain keyword ratings andcategories, website ratings and categories, advertisement indexes, etc.,and may be updated periodically for improvement, accuracy, content, etc.Depending on the embodiment, this metadata may be gathered from otherthird-party sources as well which may interface with the intelligentbookmark for purposes of categorization, organization and otherfunctionalities. That is, it is possible to provide recommendations,narrow searches, and provide other services based on extrinsic data. Byaccessing this extrinsic data, one can use existing relationalinformation to provide categorization, organization, recommendations,etc., of or for information. For example, if a third party maintains adatabase that says that most people that like blues music will like jazzas well, this third party (i.e., extrinsic) knowledge can help associatebookmarks or underlying information about blues with bookmarks orunderlying information about jazz. As another example relating toarticles, there may be a automatic categorization based on extrinsiccategorization of frequently available keywords. If an article mentions“C++” and other sites frequently categorize C++ as Science &Technology→Computers, the system could employ that as a “suggestion” tosimilarly categorize that topic.

FIG. 10 depicts one embodiment according to the present invention of howan intelligent bookmark is created. A user begins the process 140 ofcreating an intelligent bookmark by accessing a bookmark interface (BI)at 142. The bookmark interface may be a stand-alone software program ormay be part of another program, such as a web browser application. Thebookmark interface may reside on the user's computer, or may be residenton a remote server. At 144 the bookmark interface captures the URL ofthe website or document of interest. At 146-156 the identifyinginformation is obtained. For example, at 146 the user may capturecertain elements of the screenshot of the page of interest with aselection tool provided by the interface. A user may then drag-and-dropthe selection to a desired location, representing for example storage ofthose selected image or image portions. Users may also be able to usepull-down menus to create the intelligent bookmark. Additionally, thebrowser may include a tool bar or button that automatically creates afixed or customizable bookmark for a particular web page. Otherdrag-and-drop functionalities may assist the user in changing themetadata or data fields of the Intelligent Bookmarks. Users maydrag-and-drop bookmarks from certain categories to others to have thedata fields automatically reflect such changes. The bookmark interfacemay provide for timeline views which let a user see bookmarkschronologically, and slideshow view which allows a user to see bookmarksas a slideshow.

In addition or as an alternative to drag and drop abilities and menucommands, the user may capture information via capture tools. Imageselecting and cropping tools may be available for user's to highlightwhich area of the website should be in the screenshot. While defaultsettings may simply capture as much information as possible andautomatically recognize the important information of the webpage(distinguish between menu items, advertisements, article content, etc.),a user may use selecting and cropping tools to highlight only certaintext to be captured (or to be ignored, such as certain images,advertisements, etc.)

Intelligent bookmarks may also be used within documents and internetcontent that may be on the user's computer (not within a browserwindow). This is grounded in the concept that a bookmark need notnecessarily be to a web page, or even a networked document, but may infact be the address of a local document or portion of a document. Thisallows a user to capture and store various content through oneinterface, making it easy to deal with gathering information. A toolsuch as a capture button is provided within the context of anapplication such as Microsoft Word. The user bookmarks content withinthe word document, for example by highlighting a section of the documentand clicking on the capture button, which stores the bookmark to thehighlighted section in the bookmarks database. This permits a user theoption of capturing information while reviewing many different types ofdocument, such as word processing documents, data bases, spreadsheets,etc.

As previously mentioned, according to one embodiment of the presentinvention a system for creating and employing intelligent bookmarksincludes a “record” functionality that allows the user to captureinteractions and video/animation content as a video screenshot. Thistype of capturing functionality allows a user to bookmark video anddynamic content in addition to articles and other static elements ofwebsites.

Another type of capturing interface, such as a submit button, allowsusers to submit bookmarks to an online server to be processed remotely.Once submitted, a server may analyze the website for categorization,keywords, etc and store it in the online database.

Layering may also be added to intelligent bookmarks, such as present inimage and video editing applications. For example, it is possible toannotate an intelligent bookmark with handwriting or highlighting on a“layer” above the bookmark itself, such that the addition of theannotation does not change the underlying bookmark. A view of thebookmark with or without one or more layers is possible. This layeringallows users to collaborate on Intelligent Bookmarks as well. Being ableto markup information gathered from the internet in a digital version(as opposed to printed material) allows users to interact moreefficiently with research material. Such layering, highlighting, andmarkup allow some of the unique aspects of tablet PCs and PDAs, such aspen-based interactions with content, to be employed. Essentially, usersare able to treat internet content as printed material by being able toeasily markup and highlight the material. Being digital, however, allowsusers all the functionality of being to hide/save/undo changes andeasily communicate them to others. Document versioning may also beintegrated to keep track of changes in the intelligent bookmarks toreflect changes of the original website. Also, document versioning maybe used to allow for multiple versioning of highlights and markups tothe intelligent bookmarks.

While a plurality of preferred exemplary embodiments have been presentedin the foregoing detailed description, it should be understood that avast number of variations exist, and these preferred exemplaryembodiments are merely representative examples, and are not intended tolimit the scope, applicability or configuration of the invention in anyway. For example, while the foregoing describes certain aspects ofcreating, using, sharing, etc. intelligent bookmarks via a computer suchas a PC, there is nothing in the various aspects of the presentinvention precluding its use with portable or handheld devices such astablet computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and appropriatelyenabled cell phones. Thus, the foregoing detailed description providesthose of ordinary skill in the art with a convenient guide forimplementation of the invention, and contemplates that various changesin the functions and arrangements of the described embodiments may bemade without departing from the spirit and scope of the inventiondefined by the claims thereto.

1.-21. (canceled)
 22. A computer-implemented method for creating anintelligent bookmark to a document, comprising: displaying the documentcomprising at least an address, a title, and a body; receiving a userselection of content from a portion of the body of the document and usersupplemented information; generating the intelligent bookmark byretrieving the address of the document, and by automatically extractingidentifier information from the body of the document within the userselection; and storing the address in association with the identifierinformation and the user supplemented information.
 22. The method ofclaim 22, further comprising: providing a preview of the intelligentbookmark; receiving user edits to the preview, the user edits comprisingthe user supplemented information.
 23. The method of claim 22, furthercomprising: automatically uploading the intelligent bookmark to a serverfor remote access.
 22. The method of claim 22, further comprising:uploading the intelligent bookmark to a server that stores and providesaccess to a plurality of intelligent bookmarks uploaded by a pluralityof users.
 23. The method of claim 22, further comprising: displayingadvertisements to the user based on the identifier information.
 24. Themethod of claim 22, further comprising: notifying the user of web sitesof interest based on the identifier information.
 25. The method of claim22, further comprising: displaying an intelligent bookmark toolbar foractions related to intelligent bookmarks within a browser application.26. The method of claim 22, further comprising: storing a plurality ofintelligent bookmarks associated with the user, including theintelligent bookmark; and generating a user profile from the pluralityof intelligent bookmarks.
 27. The method of claim 27, wherein generatingthe user profile comprises: generating the user profile from at leastone of a plurality of categories of interest, a plurality of documentcharacteristics, a plurality of keywords of interest, and a plurality ofdocument behaviors.
 28. The method of claim 22, wherein generating theintelligent bookmark comprises generating the intelligent bookmark forpresentation compatible a smart phone display format.
 29. The method ofclaim 22, wherein generating the intelligent bookmark comprisesgenerating the intelligent bookmark for operational logic compatiblewith a smart phone display format.
 30. The method of claim 22, furthercomprising: tracking a version of the intelligent bookmark to reflectchanges to the document.
 31. The method of claim 22, wherein theintelligent bookmark includes an image and further comprising: receivinga mark-up of the intelligent bookmark; and generating a layer to displaythe mark-up.
 32. The method of claim 22, wherein the document is locatedon a local computing device.
 33. The method of claim 22, wherein theautomatic extraction includes automatically identifying and extractingtext information from the document.
 34. The method of claim 22, whereinthe automatic extraction includes automatically performing opticalcharacter recognition on the document, and extracting text from theresults of the optical character recognition.
 35. An article ofmanufacture comprising a non-transitory computer-readable media storingcomputer-executable instructions for performing a method for creating anintelligent bookmark to a document, comprising: displaying the documentcomprising at least an address, a title, and a body; receiving a userselection of content from a portion of the body of the document and usersupplemented information; generating the intelligent bookmark byretrieving the address of the document, and by automatically extractingidentifier information from the body of the document within the userselection; and storing the address in association with the identifierinformation and the user supplemented information.